Friday, July 20, 2012

This is something I actually made for a quiz on PL/SQL Challenge, but I think the technique could be useful for others as well :-)

The idea is you may have some master/detail data (in this case orders and orderlines) for which you get XML with such data that needs to be inserted into two relational tables. Many might be tempted to parse the XML client side or in PL/SQL, loop through the data, and then insert the orders and lines row by row (or perhaps bulk insert from arrays.)

But it can be done in a single statement if you combine XMLTABLE function to read the XML relationally and INSERT ALL statement to do a multi-table insert.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

This post has no serious purpose. I was just fooling around with the MODEL clause when I got the idea that ITERATE could be used for modelling Conway's Game of Life. So that's what I did - just a little fun example of what MODEL can be used for. Sure it could be done in any number of other ways, I don't claim this to be a smart or efficient way, just fun ;-)

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

This was the first time I did a presentation. I am not quite satisfied with my performance - I spent too much time on the basic examples in the beginning of my presentation, so I only had time to do 4 out of my planned 6 demos. I know I can do better than that, so I just need to try it again some time :-)

On the plus side everyone can read my paper where I go through all the 6 demos in detail. That paper made it to the top 5 in the Editors Choice Award (thank you, editors :-) so if you didn't get it all at my presentation, you can get it all in the paper.

And thank you to the fellow who the day after told me: "After your presentation I have seen the light. Now I understand that analytic functions are really not as difficult as I thought they were." That cheered me up very much! And that is in my opinion the whole point about KScope - sharing experiences so other people can learn from you as you learn from other people. Ain't no better place on earth to do that than KScope :-)

Apart from my presentation I had a blast. Content wise I always learn a lot at KScope. And KScope also understands that you learn a lot better if you also have fun - that rodeo was a brilliant idea for the wednesday night event. The people gathering at KScope also make it awesome - both organizers and attendees - so a big thank you to everybody who was there.

I can only recommend that if you can, then come to KScope13 in New Orleans. You will learn a lot, you will have fun, and if you engage yourself and do stuff like presenting or being ambassador or whatever, you can end up with a name tag almost long enough to trip over :-)